


Cassandra

by lwise2019



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25387972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: Ella Stine recognized early what was happening, but what could she do about it, and what happened to her as the Rash raged through the world?
Comments: 17
Kudos: 16





	1. Cassandra

Ella Stine turned the mask over once again, not really seeing it.

 _Cassandra,_ she thought distantly.

 _I really shouldn't have hit him. But then, he hit me first._ She found it impossible to care.

_I did what I could, but it didn't work. Nothing will work._

__

__

_It's the end of the world._


	2. Cassandra

Ella read the paper thoughtfully. Iceland was closing its borders for a month because of this new disease? Strange. The disease didn't sound that bad, just producing a rash and fever. How could that justify cutting a modern country off from the world for a month?

_What does Iceland know?_

”The illness was first diagnosed only two days ago. The first patients were a group of eleven illegal refugees arriving on a ship to Spain last week. The nationality of these patients is not yet known.”

_It's not known? Couldn't the authorities ask? Even if they refuse to answer because they're illegal, their language, their accents, the foods they eat or refuse to eat, even the way they walk or stand … unless they aren't talking, eating, or standing. Unless they're too sick to do anything at all._

Yet the paper said the incubation time was “several days to almost two weeks”; how could they know that if they didn't even know where the patients came from? She stared off into space for a moment.

_Oh. The **first** patients. They were being smuggled in on a ship. The ship had a crew and other passengers, and spent a while trying to sneak into port. So these eleven are just the **first** infected on the ship, and they figured out the incubation time based on how long it took everyone else on the ship to catch it._

Ella turned back to the paper. 

“The disease affects both humans and other animals.”

_And how do they know **that?** Ah, smugglers, poorly maintained ship, mice, rats … rats on shipboard spread the plague around, back in the day … _

_Rats can swim. I read once about a cruel experiment where they threw rats in a barrel of water, no way out, and watched to see how long it took them to drown. Some of the rats swam for sixty hours. Rats from that ship could have made it to shore. With a highly contagious and possibly dangerous disease._

_Oh, this is bad._

“The illness has caused no fatalities.”

_But you don't know where it came from. You don't know how many are dead back there. And these people were picked up by smugglers; they didn't just flag down the ship as you'd flag down a taxi. They would have been in a place where migrants were generally picked up; they would have been in a group, maybe a **large** group, and they were contagious._

_Where are the others who were exposed to them? They would have been picked up by other smugglers._

_They could be … **anywhere** that migrants go._

Ella lowered the paper slowly.

_That's what Iceland knows. There could be clusters of the disease anywhere by now. It must have started spreading recently, or we'd have heard about the medical systems … being … overwhelmed …_

She looked out the window to her left, not seeing the lights of Copenhagen beyond.

_**Would** we hear about that? If the disease was brought to Europe by migrants, they would have an incentive to keep quiet about rashes and fevers. At least at first. At least until it spread beyond their limited circle._

_And then? Might the authorities try to keep a lid on it? Try to avoid another economic disaster like happened with COVID? If they thought the disease was relatively benign they might cover it up initially. And when they found it could kill people, some people at least, what would they do?_

_They would try to avoid panic. They would try to avoid blame. They would claim that the disease came with a small group of illegal refugees being smuggled in. That's what they've done._

_And people have to be warned._

She started working up equations based on her long-ago class on epidemiology. There was a lot she didn't know, like the R0, or how long it took the illness to run its course, but such things could be discovered by her followers. She had only to send out the requests — and warnings — on social media. The authorities couldn't hide it all completely. Her followers would push to close the borders and lock down Denmark too, but not everyone was on social media, and the authorities might not act in time. She had to get the word out to everyone!

Her next appearance on the talk show was in three days. She would be ready.


	3. Day 3, Year 0

“But I _need_ to wear a mask. _You_ need to wear a mask. _Everyone_ needs to wear a mask!”

“I understand that you feel that way,” Alma, the make-up person, said in that soothing tone that set Ella's teeth on edge, “but you won't be allowed into the studio with that mask on.”

Ella rubbed her forehead with the fingers of both hands.

“All right. I'm risking my health coming here anyway, but people have to be warned. They have to be!”

“Sure, you warn them,” Alma said soothingly, gently removed the mask, and began to apply the make-up that would prevent Ella from looking like a zombie under the harsh studio lights. “Mr. Pedersen will be on with you today.”

Ella couldn't make the face she wanted to make, for she would disturb the make-up process and have to go through it all over again, with Alma _breathing_ in her face. Pedersen was an idiot who grew his own pot and had once tried to eat the neighbor's dog. The fact that said dog had taken several chunks out of _him_ was only justice, Ella thought. Still, the man supported whatever the authorities did, so long as they let him get high in peace. He was not the right person to appear when people needed to be warned. And she'd told her boss so, for what good it did.

“And today we have Ella Stine, noted social commentator,” — _and doesn't he always make that sound just like “conspiracy theorist”, which is what they call me in private_ — “and Jozef Pedersen, gardening and herbal medicine expert,” — _oh, well done_ — “to talk about the so-called Rash disease and the unprecedented decision by the Danish government to close the air-hub of Kastrup _and_ prohibit international sea and land traffic.

“So, Mr. Pedersen, I understand that you consider this decision by our government to be very unwise.”

“Absolutely. It's a terrible idea.”

The moderator, Dedric Jensen, turned to her. “Ms. Stine, _you_ , on the other hand, think this was a good solution, yes?”

Ella turned to glare at Pedersen before turning back and answering with forced patience, “The _only_ good solution! If this makes it possible for us to hinder it from spreading through our nation for even a few weeks, we could have a cure at our disposal by that time.” Pedersen was rolling his eyes at her and she resisted with difficulty the urge to kick him _hard_ under the table.

“Or,” she went on, “at least a decent game plan on how to handle the care of the sick during a time when most of our country will be bedridden!” _But they won't die. Not most of them. Not healthy well-fed people with all the advantages of modern medicine. Sick, bedridden, sure, and that's bad enough._ “Because I believe, and I have _facts_ and _statistics_ and _science_ to back me up, that this illness is not going to affect just a manageable portion of the population. I have estimated that approximately 58% of the global population will be ill during its peak.” _And if they'd just let me bring in my laptop, or my spreadsheets that I printed out, or, or **anything** maybe I could convince them._ “That kind of situation will be _catastrophic!_ Even for just a week.”

Now Jensen was rolling his eyes too. “That's … a rather pessimistic prediction,” he answered weakly.

“I'm being _realistic!”_ It was hard not to shout at him, at all of them. How could they not _understand?_

“Ah, yes,” Pedersen put in smoothly, “I absolutely agree.” His smarmy tone was unmistakable, and she turned to glare at him again. “Except that I think you accidentally used the word 'realistic' instead of 'moronic'. A tiny mistake, happens to the best of us.” Kicking him under the table was sounding better all the time.

She lost her temper, shouting, asking if he wanted the audience to die. The idiot actually argued that it was a violation of human rights to close the borders! Like letting the whole country end up bedridden at once wasn't itself a violation of human rights! And he thought the illness was “tame”! But she had to let him talk because Jensen, not on camera at the moment, glared at her and made a throat-cutting motion. She had to subside. It wouldn't help if they went suddenly to a commercial and came back without her. But when he said no one had _died_ of the illness, she couldn't stay quiet anymore. He knew nothing, and she said so.

Jensen had been looking over his shoulder, hoping for the signal to go to commercial. No signal being forthcoming, he turned back and tried to get control of the situation. “O-okay, would you like to share?” She hated that particular figure of speech; she didn't want to _share,_ she wanted to _warn._ And now was her chance!

“I keep reading all these claims that the 'patients zero' are all in stable condition, and even expected to start recovering soon.” The camera was focusing in on her. This was her one chance to save the world and she had to, _had to_ , make it count. “Well, if that's true, then how come we don't even know the freaking nationality of these damn people?! Because they were either _comatose_ or **dead** before anyone could figure that out!”

“They're refugees, they're scared and won't —” That idiot Pedersen was blathering again, and her camera was off now; they'd moved to another one that she couldn't see. But at least she'd made people think. _Surely_ she'd made people think. Still, she'd keep trying as long as they didn't kick her off the set.

“Like there wouldn't be an army of linguists hovering around them every second of the day if there was anything left to hover around! Just a cough and they could probably figure out where someone's from!” 

“You make a very … _passionate_ case for yourself, Stine,” Jensen said in his usual condescending tones, “but I'm sure you can see that many of our viewers would view you as a crazy conspiracy theorist. As usual.” _Well, there he's come right out and said it. They've always had this polite fiction that they aren't laughing at me …_ “Do you _really_ think the government is out to get us?”

“No, not at all,” she answered sadly. She hadn't even gotten through to him; what effect could she have had on viewers who just heard her called a crazy conspiracy theorist? Jensen was watching her with his elbows on the table, fingers interlaced and his forefingers extended side-by-side in that incredibly annoying professorial pose he liked to assume. She tried to explain, tried to make him _see._ People had to prepare for weeks of interrupted services. They had to protect themselves. How could she make them understand? “Start wearing face masks already! I would be wearing mine, but they wouldn't let me into the studio with it on. See how serious I am? I even risked my own health coming here. It's because I truly care about my fellow man.” She was pleading now. “You all deserved the truth, and I've given it to you. Now act wisely.”

The moment was spoiled when Pedersen cleared his throat. “Umm, indeed. And the wisest act would be to completely disregard everything this woman has to say.” Ella rolled her eyes and threw her hands wide in a gesture expressing, “I can't believe this.” The idiot brought up the incident of the spider eggs in fruits and vegetables. He _always_ did that, like she'd told everyone not to eat them ever! There _were_ spider eggs, tarantula eggs in fact, in the fruits and vegetables from one particular supplier, and because of the stink she and her followers had raised, that supplier had been investigated and forced to clean up … but this wasn't the _time_ to set the cretin straight.

“Just think about _that_ for a second,” the cretin went on, “and then decide which one of us has more credibility.”

That was too much; she couldn't keep quiet any longer. “I'm sure it's not the man who was recently arrested for getting high and trying to eat someone's dog!”

“Liar!” Pedersen shouted, shoving her shoulder hard. “That never happened!”

“He's the liar! It happened!” She got in a slap before he knocked her back into her chair, and then she kicked him, and then the studio personnel were yanking them both out of their seats and pushing her out the door.

“You won't be invited back, by the way,” Jensen advised her just as the door slammed behind her.


	4. Day 5, Year 0

Ella watched Copenhagen through her window. It looked … almost right as the evening shadows drew on. The street lights were coming on, and the traffic signals changed as usual. If there were fewer cars, fewer pedestrians, fewer lights in the shops down the street, well, there weren't _many_ fewer.

Copenhagen didn't sound right. There were too many sirens, and she knew their sounds well. Those off to the north were fire engines, though from her angle she couldn't see the fire. The rest were mostly ambulances, but those two, far to the west, they were police.

“The EU has confirmed that _two_ of the original patients did die earlier today,” the announcer stated. “The remaining nine patients are comatose, and _not_ in stable condition as previously claimed. Now entering their fourth week of infection, _none_ of the patients have responded significantly to any treatment.”

“Oof!” Molly, her five-year-old tabby cat, had leapt into her lap without warning, turning around several times and then settling, purring.

“Locations with a significant percentage of the population diagnosed with the rash illness will be placed under martial law, both to prepare for the rapid degeneration of health expected in the next couple of weeks, and to then maintain at least a rudimentary level of health care during the wait for a cure.”

Ella stretched across to switch off the television, careful not to disturb the cat.

“So they can't hide it anymore,” she told Molly. “Maybe if they hadn't taken three days. Maybe if they'd let me warn people some more. Maybe if they hadn't called us conspiracy theorists.” She sighed. “But then maybe it wouldn't have worked anyway. It was probably here, all over the city, before we ever knew. And we can't close the borders against _everything._ ”

She petted the cat, gazing out at the city. The show had been just two days earlier, and it seemed to have had little effect. Some people were wearing masks but by no means all. Would masks help at this point, anyway?

“I have a month's supply of food for both of us,” she explained, stroking her purring friend. “The tub is full of water — and you bet I scrubbed it out first! — and all the buckets I could find. So we've got a month of water too. If I get sick — no, _when_ I get sick — I'll put you outside. It's wrong but … you're a little lion, aren't you?” Molly licked a paw proudly. “You'll have to take care of yourself for a while. If I get better, I'll find you. And if not …” She sighed again. “It's your best chance, kitten.” Molly yawned. Such details were beneath her.


	5. Day 9, Year 0

Copenhagen was motionless under the snow; she could almost think that people were staying home because of the storm. But the television was on, and helicopter reports showed rivers of cars streaming out on all the major roads. Not on her street; it led to a cul-de-sac, and the few who wandered in quickly departed.

“Where are they going, Molly?” Molly woke, stretched elaborately. “No, I suppose you don't know anymore than they do.” Ella remembered reading about the Black Death, and people fleeing from the cities, taking the disease with them into the countryside. But this time there was every reason to believe it was already spreading freely in the countryside.

“It's contagious to animals. Mammals only, I think they said, but still. So you can get it from me.” She looked over at the cat luxuriating on her bed. “If I was exposed earlier, then I already have it and so do you. But if not, we're both safe as long as we stay here. As long as we _can_ stay here.”

The utilities were still on and for as long as she could, she would use tap water rather than the water she had accumulated. “The 'first' patients, as the EU likes to call them, are dying now, finally, after four weeks or so of illness. Seven dead already, and would you like to give odds on the other four? Or all the others already infected?” Molly did not care to give odds.

The announcer was now reading off a list of improvised clinics where sick people could be taken, or could take themselves, to be cared for by volunteers.

_How many volunteers will they get to tend people with a highly contagious, very deadly disease? Maybe I should volunteer. I tried to help everyone and it didn't work. Maybe I should help the small number that I can._

_If anything can help. Seven dead out of eleven, the rest comatose. And that's with the best care modern medicine can provide. Improvised clinics with limited resources and barely-trained volunteers? That's just keeping people comfortable while they die._

She turned to look out the window again. She could see the smoke of three fires off in the distance. The city still echoed with sirens: ambulances, police cars. Not fire engines.

The patients from Spain had finally been traced to a refugee camp in North Africa, but little could be learned beyond that, for the camp had been abandoned with many dead and whatever survivors there were, had fled. Some had gone mad and attacked the investigators; the last radio transmissions (suppressed by the authorities, of course, but available on the Internet if you knew where to look, also of course) reported that they were under attack by monsters. That was silly, though, nearly everyone thought. Obviously they were attacked and killed by people dressed up as monsters. Why? Who knew what strange thoughts might have motivated the survivors of a strange and deadly disease.

_The illness goes on for weeks. We could easily wind up with most of the city sick at once._

_Not “sick”. Comatose. **Dying.**_

_Dead._

_Four weeks to die. For them, with the best of care. People are dying here already. Someone was wailing upstairs yesterday, crying for the dead._

She went off to the bathroom, threw off her dressing gown, turned slowly, examined her pudgy, mid-thirties body in the full-length mirror.

No rash so far.


	6. Day 30, Year 0

Ella didn't even flinch at the sound of the scream, having heard too many in the past three weeks. Scooping up the syringe laid out conveniently on a cabinet they'd pulled into the middle of the room, she turned to see which of her “patients”, so called, had screamed.

Ah, that older man. They'd never gotten his name; he'd been practically unconscious when brought in and never really came to enough to talk to them. And now … he was tied to the cot, of course, all of them were, but his hands and feet were extending, and his neck was lengthening. She moved fast; it was best if she could reach the head, though the heart would often work. He might die of the change, of course, most of the infected did, even if they weren't lucky enough to die cleanly, but if he didn't …

Ella slammed the syringe hard against the man's forehead with her right hand, the heavy steel needle penetrating deep into his skull. She had no idea what kind of animal the needle had been intended for — elephants, maybe — but it wouldn't bend or break even doing this. Her left hand came down on the plunger, driving the poison into his brain, even as the tentacles that had been his ribs knocked her backwards and stumbling to the floor.

Lucas helped her to her feet. A faint trace of the rash had made its way up his cheek and almost to his left eye; he had said he would make his own peace soon, sparing her the need. For now, he helped care for their patients in hopes that one of them — surely _one_ of them — would recover.

Neither of them wore a mask or gloves. Anna and Nils, the other two volunteers, were uninfected as far as anyone knew, so Lucas and Ella left the protective gear to them. Lucas had never worn it; he hadn't explained but a few mentions of his family led Ella to believe he'd been exposed caring for someone at home and then … well, and then it hadn't been necessary to care for them anymore.

Ella had worn protective gear at first, but when a child — hardly more than a baby! — sank his teeth — his fangs — into her arm, she'd run out to the courtyard and cried for an hour, and after that she hadn't worn the gear anymore. Leave it for someone who could be saved.

After prodding the patient repeatedly with broomsticks, they decided that he was really dead, cut the ties, and pulled the corpse out to the heap in the courtyard, a dozen meters from the door. Someone would come by and collect the corpses after a while. Someone always did.

Anna Larssen had already been volunteering when Ella arrived, a slender young woman of average height in her early twenties with long straight blond hair and blue eyes. According to Nils, she had simply wandered in one day soon after the clinic was established and started helping. As she scarcely answered questions, they had no idea what had motivated her; it had been all Ella could manage to get her last name. She was making the rounds now, holding a cup of water to a patient's mouth here, wiping a sweaty brow there. Even with her gloves and mask and heavy clothing, she was taking a huge risk. Only look at what had happened to Ella! Lucas had tried to dissuade her from volunteering, or at least from close contact with the patients, but she had looked at him with eyes that didn't quite focus and said, “No, this is where I belong.” After that, Ella and Lucas had let her be. Where else should she be, after all? Where else should any of them be?

Nils Lindgren, a rather short and stocky man in his mid-fifties with closely-trimmed black hair going gray and brown eyes, was a mechanic and had been one of those who set up the clinic originally and had simply stayed on afterwards for lack of anything better to do. The first volunteers other than Nils were gone; Ella didn't ask what had happened to them. He stayed back from the patients, cleaning, sterilizing gear (as best they could with only boiling water), fetching and carrying, even running out to get supplies. He'd gone to the troops at Kastellet for help, and come back with the big needle and syringe, and a liter or so of the poison. They didn't even know what the poison was, but it worked and they used it because of the alternative.

The alternative was a patient that turned into a hideously deformed, mindless, blood-thirsty monster. There were few sirens now, and the loudest sounds from the street were gunfire as soldiers tried to protect themselves and anyone not actually dead yet.

“You might be immune, you know,” Lucas observed, leaning wearily against the now-empty cot. “They say some people are. When were you bitten?”

“A week — no, eight days ago. Doesn't mean anything though. Incubation can be as long as twelve days.”

“Can be. Usually isn't.” He watched sadly as she checked on another patient, a young man who'd been there almost a week and therefore was likely to either die or … change … soon. “I'd like you to be immune. Someone ought to be. Someone _good.”_

“ _You're_ good,” she answered quietly. “Doesn't seem to help. And anyway” — she turned, waved a hand around the room and the dying city beyond — “who wants to live in this?”

“ 'Where there's life there's hope,' ” he quoted, and then shrugged. “Or not.”

“Can you watch things? I've got to go take care of Molly.” When she decided to volunteer, she'd cut a cat-size opening in the lid of a bucket, put a good towel in the bucket and screwed the lid on, taken it and Molly's bowl out behind the apartment building. Since then, she went once a day to provide food and water. So far, Molly had done well, sleeping most of the time in her little den, but complaining vigorously whenever she saw her human that she was an _indoor_ cat.

Things were worse, she saw, even since the previous day. The air was full of smoke from fires left unfought, and she could hear screams mixed with the sirens and gunfire. _The monsters that we've seen so far are the early cases. The bulk of the population is starting to die or change **right now.** What if I **am** immune to this? Does it make sense to stay here and get killed by a monster? Or should I try to run for safety — and where would I find safety anyway? — while civilization dies around me?_

Molly greeted her with complaints. Some of the people who'd brought them patients had said that cats were immune, all cats were immune. That meant that Molly would survive, for a time at least. Longer than Ella, most likely.

When she returned, the empty cot was full again, this time with a teen-age girl who looked at Ella with wild, mad eyes.


	7. Day 32, Year 0

Ella was awakened by a series of thuds and crashes. Turning over on her cot, she saw that Nils was bringing in pieces of — was it salvaged duct work? — and piling them on the floor at the back of the lobby which served as their “clinic”. Several of the patients who were less deeply affected moaned or wailed in response to the noise.

“What on Earth on you _doing?”_ Ella asked.

“It's getting cold again and the power's off for good now. I'm going to make us a chimney connected to the A/C ducts” — he waved at a vent high up on the wall — “so we can have a fire here on the tile and not all freeze to death.”

“Oh, that's very clever!” she admired. “Where does the smoke go?”

“How should _I_ know? As long as it isn't in here, why should we care? Let it fill up the whole building! This building will never be used again and _you know that!_ ” The man had been so stable and quiet that Ella was shocked at his anger. “I don't even know why I'm _here!_ Why don't you just cut all their throats and be done with it? You know they won't recover!”

“We don't know that,” Lucas put in from the chair where he'd been watching the patients all night. “That woman who brought us the little girl” — he gestured sadly at a little girl who definitely would not make it, being already deeply comatose and largely covered with the rash — “she said a soldier told her that they're working on a cure. That it should be released in a couple or three weeks. And … we are civilized people, Nils. We're keeping these patients comfortable. We don't kill the helpless. That's all.”

The rash covered almost all of the left side of his face now, Ella saw. Lucas would not survive for even a week. The cure would be far too late for him. It was so unfair! But then, the whole situation was terribly unfair for the entire world. As he said, there was nothing they could do but try to remain civilized.

Subsiding, Nils stared at Lucas for a long moment, then turned back to his duct work, organizing the sections and duct-taping them together. Anna went over to help, and the two were soon in a low-voiced conversation about ladders and braces. Outside it began to snow again.

* * *

By evening they had a good fire going, fueled by furniture which Nils and Lucas had broken up, and the lobby was tolerably warm despite a blizzard outside. Ella, Lucas, and Anna were making the rounds, offering water and kindness to their patients, when Anna suddenly screamed. Rushing to her side, Ella found that the girl with mad eyes had bitten her, was still biting her. Lucas pushed Ella hastily aside and punched the girl hard in the temple, knocking her out instantly.

“Let me see,” Ella demanded. Freed, Anna was sobbing, but held out her right arm. “I don't see any blood. Did she bite your hand? Or your arm?”

“A-a-arm —”

“Go to Nils. Have him look at it. We don't dare; we might infect you ourselves. Go on now.”

Anna stumbled back to the fire where Nils was already on his feet, holding out his arms to receive and comfort her. After a moment he called to the others, “She's not bitten! Her jacket protected her! She's all right!”

Ella sagged in relief while Lucas, who was still looking down at the girl, raised his eyes to hers. “I was a fan of yours, Ella Stine. I watched you whenever you were on. They called you a conspiracy theorist, but you were right, you were right all the time. I always wanted to meet you, and then, here you are.” He sighed. “I'm going to have to leave you now, Ella.”

Ella stared at him, this man twenty years her elder. In another time, another _world_ , they might have been friends, maybe even lovers, but here and now? She stepped forward, threw her arms around him and hugged with all her might. He hugged her back and for a long moment they held each other across the gulf of illness.

Lucas stepped back, stroked her hair briefly with a hand already twisted by the merciless disease. “I still think you're immune. Stay well, Ella Stine.” Turning away, he made his way between the cots to the door, then stopped, his hand on the door handle. “ 'I'm just going outside, and may be some time.' ” He smiled at her through the ravages of the Rash, and she smiled back through the tears.


	8. Day 33, Year 0

The blizzard had blown itself out by morning and so Ella went to check on Molly, carefully not looking at the heap of bodies, to which one had probably added himself overnight. She believed the cat would have been all right in her snug little bucket, but still perhaps she should bring her furry friend to the clinic. If cats were immune, that would be safe enough, surely.

Molly was extremely vocal about her human's failings in leaving her alone in a blizzard. After putting out more food and pouring fresh melted snow for her to drink, Ella stood and regarded her apartment building. She hadn't been back inside since starting to volunteer; why bother, when the place was empty? And yet — they'd long since exhausted her hoarded supplies and the patients trickling in brought with them (or were accompanied by) less and less food. Perhaps there was food left behind by her neighbors in their panicked flight.

> Two weeks after that first news report of the disease that came to be called simply “The Rash”, Ella was awakened in mid-day by feet thumping down the hallway outside her apartment. Her sleep schedule had deteriorated to random naps as she sought to keep track of things on the Internet, where there was nothing but increasingly desperate pleas for help and streaming videos of monsters and, worse, people and animals changing _into_ monsters. The videos were often cut off.
> 
> The broadcast news had given up on concealing the problem and admitted that all of the original patients were dead as were many other early patients, and in fact no one was known to have recovered. That patients might become monsters: the authorities still denied that but conceded that patients might go mad and attack those around them.
> 
> Calling through the door — she certainly wasn't going to open it — she tried to find out what was happening, but all she got were various disjointed answers about Copenhagen being full of disease and monsters and the need to get _out_ , get out _now!_ Retreating to her window, she watched in silence as vehicles streamed from the parking garage next door.
> 
> The following day, she ventured out to see what had happened. Every apartment on her floor was empty but her own, so she went on to cautiously check the other floors, finding them all empty as well. It seemed that everyone had fled but her. Uneasy in the lonely silence, she returned to her own apartment and asked Molly whether they should have run for it with the others. The cat yawned and stretched; it wasn't her problem. Since anyway Ella had no car, there seemed no point in trying to escape, so Ella went back to watching and listening from her window as the city died around her.  
> 

“Shall we try some looting?” Ella asked Molly, who gave her a dubious look, finishing up her breakfast. “We may as well. I don't believe there are any police or even soldiers around. And if there were, I think they'd be doing the looting themselves.” With that, she cautiously pushed open the lobby door and peered around. Just because the building had been empty when she left it did not mean that it was empty now. Molly pushed past her, determined to return to her pampered indoor lifestyle.

They had barely entered the lobby when Molly gave a shriek, a feline war cry that made Ella leap backward in shock, and charged across to attack _something_ in the dark back corner of the room. Pulling out her flashlight with a shaking hand, Ella aimed it at the corner and saw the cat tearing some small creature apart. As Molly strolled back, tail up in pride, her human saw that her prey had been a mouse. Originally a mouse, at least.

With a deep breath, Ella led the way to the staircase and they began to climb by flashlight. When Molly began hissing and tearing at a hall door, her human hesitantly opened it, allowing her to race in with another shriek and tear apart not one but three tiny monsters that had started their existence as mice.

Molly had never been a mouser. Ella hadn't actually minded, since cats tend to play with mice and a simple snap-trap was quick and painless on the rare occasions when mice got into the building. Now though, the cat seemed to go after the mouse-things with a frenzy. Since she seemed to be able to kill them without injury to herself, Ella just allowed her to do it. Bad enough to have mice in the building, but mutated mouse-things? Intolerable.

Most of the apartments had been stripped of food by their tenants, but there were several still stocked with canned goods and dried food (and other foods no longer edible and frequently quite smelly). Ella found a backpack and loaded it up with the best of the supplies, leading Molly back downstairs and out. As soon as she saw that they were going to leave the building, Molly began vocally objecting and Ella finally had to carry her. With a protesting Molly deposited in her bucket and the bucket on Ella's hip with her arm over the opening, holding the bucket in place, they set out for the clinic in the Amalienborg plaza.

Halfway across the plaza, Molly began to hiss and spit. Ella paused to peer down at the bucket. “Kitten? What's going on in there?” No answer but more hissing. After a moment Ella proceeded, but she had gone only a few steps before Molly shrieked her war cry again and tried to tear her way through Ella's arm, which was fortunately protected by a heavy coat. “Molly, what on Earth?” She looked around uncertainly but, seeing nothing untoward, backed away slowly. After just a couple of steps, Molly settled down to hissing and spitting, and a few steps later, to silence.

Ella stared down at the bucket and then again at her surroundings. Tentatively pacing forward once more, she made a mark in the snow where the cat began to hiss, and again where she began trying to escape, voicing her war cry and inviting … something … to choose weapons and come outside, singly or in bunches. A couple more back-and-forths made it plain that in fact the cat always responded the same way at the same point. Molly's human set out to triangulate the cause of this distress, and it took little time to determine that the source was … the clinic itself.

Ella backed away, taking her far from the clinic before leaning against a building and trying to work out what was happening and what to do next. “So you detect something that I don't. You detected the mouse-things through a door at pretty close range, but you're reacting to the clinic from thirty meters away or more. Through doors and windows as well.” She stared down into the bucket, where Molly was coolly licking a paw. “So you detect monsters and people with the Rash and you want to fight them … is it even safe to leave you out here? What if a monster wanders by and you attack? What if you _lose?”_

She really didn't know what to do. She obviously couldn't take the cat with her to the clinic, and she couldn't abandon the patients to stay with the cat. Finally she retraced her steps and settled the bucket back in the courtyard behind the apartment building. It had been safe so far, and she could only hope that it would remain so. Leaving an unhappy Molly behind her, she returned to the clinic.

The paper sign she'd made (“We have no beds, please take patients elsewhere”) was gone from the window, and when she came in to see which patient had died, she was only slightly surprised to find that the teen-age girl who had bitten Anna was gone. Neither Nils nor Anna made any comment about the case and Ella asked no questions. It was, after all, possible that the girl had simply died; some people did die very early in the disease, after all.

They had a feast of canned soup that evening, and no patients died that night.


	9. Day 44, Year 0

Nils returned from Kastellet at a dead run. “I've got it!” he cried as he entered. “The cure! I've got the cure!”

Even Anna responded to that. She had been increasingly vague over the past weeks, caring for the patients as always while scarcely speaking to the others, but now she turned to him with an expression of hope, the first hope any of them had had.

Ella hurried over. “What have we got? How do we administer it?”

“There's more than enough for everyone here,. One vial per person. We don't have enough syringes so we'll have to reuse.”

“That's okay. Get a pot of water boiling. We'll boil them for … let's say five minutes between patients. That should be good enough.”

Nils set the precious box of vials down on the cabinet they'd dragged into the middle of the room and retreated to the back where he threw some more books on the fire — they'd run out of furniture and were using heavy bound books rather than try to raid other, possibly inhabited, buildings for fuel — and hung a pot of melted snow from his hand-built frame. That done, he sat and watched with shining eyes as Ella used their three syringes to inject the first three patients.

“Nothing's happening,” Ella said worriedly as she and Anna joined him by the fire. They had accepted that she was immune, over three weeks having passed since the bite, so she no longer kept her distance from the other two. Still, though there was no physical distance between them, there was an emotional distance: they were in constant peril, and she was not.

“They said the effect wouldn't be immediate. You have to give it time to work.”

“Should — should you two take it now?”

“No. They were clear on that. It's not a vaccine. If you don't already have the Rash, it won't help and might even hurt. And we don't want to waste it if there are others out there.”

Patients had continued to trickle in, keeping their crude clinic full. All three volunteers were sleeping on the floor these days, having given up their cots for more patients. For the past week Ella had been quietly begging patients, “Just hang on. Just a little longer.” But still they died — or Ella had to kill them — and she and Nils dragged their bodies outside. No one came to pick up the bodies these days, so Nils had gotten incendiaries from Kastellet and siphoned gas from abandoned vehicles so that he could burn each one, saying it was to prevent rats from defiling the bodies.

“We've got another problem,” Nils went on. “We're almost out of food again, and when these people wake up, we've got to feed them. Somehow. Things are bad at Kastellet. The soldiers are going to have to leave. They've cleaned out everything around them and no supplies are coming in.”

Ella watched the pot of water, now coming to a boil, and dropped the syringes in. “I don't think there's any more food in my apartment building.”

“No, and I've gathered what I can around here. There's nothing towards Kastellet, thanks to the soldiers —”

“Well, they do have to eat also.”

“Right, right, but that means I have to go deeper into the city. Into areas that the soldiers haven't been into. Areas where the monsters … haven't been fought.”

“Ah.”

“Ella, do you know how to shoot?”

“Yes. It's part of being a conspiracy theorist, you know. Pistols, rifles, shotguns … I've practiced with all of them.”

“Good. I've got a couple of rifles from the soldiers. If you come along to guard my back, we might be able to gather enough for these people. Once they're on their feet, we'll have enough to try to make it out of the city.”

“More people won't help if they're unarmed.”

“Don't worry about that. There are a lot of dead soldiers out there. I'll have no trouble arming everybody. If you'll guard my back while I do it.”

“Done! Anna …”

Anna was watching the patients and seemed not to have heard their discussion at all. Nils sighed. “Anna will come with us. It's not safe to leave one person alone with all the monsters around.”

“But the patients …” Ella objected.

“They'll be fine for a few hours while we forage. And, Ella, if something attacks the patients, Anna alone can't protect them.”

There was no arguing with that and they sat in silence for a long while, watching the patients across the room. “Five minutes,” Ella said at last, and fished the syringes out of the pot with a spoon so that she could treat three more patients.

By late afternoon, all patients had been treated but none had responded. They were quiet and none had _changed_ , so the volunteers took that as a good sign.

“We'll go forage in the morning,” Nils said, and they settled down to wait for morning, or for the patients to wake up.

* * *

The day dawned clear and very cold, which Nils said was a good thing since he'd observed that monsters tended to hide in sheltered spots in such weather. He'd even seen dead monsters, apparently frozen, after snowstorms. They all bundled up, even Anna, who had become very quiet and obedient. Ella worried about her but was, after all, only a conspiracy theorist and not a psychologist. Whatever was going on inside the woman's head, Ella couldn't help with, but at least she and Nils could try to keep her alive.

“Wait,” Ella said as they started out. “We'd better leave the patients a note. What if someone wakes up while we're gone?” Nils shrugged, eager to get on with it but understanding her concerns, waiting patiently while she wrote a note and propped it next to the medical supplies.

> If any of you wake up, don't be alarmed, we didn't leave you for dead! But the food has run scarce and we've received word that the troops at Kastellet have decided to abandon their cause and move on. We need to venture further out to find supplies, but we're not giving up on you, not now.


	10. Day 45, Year 0

Their progress was cautious, Nils leading the way with his rifle ready, Anna following obediently behind him, Ella as rear-guard with her own rifle ready. The fresh unmarked snow in the streets of Copenhagen was a painful reminder of the utter depopulation of the city. At least the bitter cold kept down the stench of death and decay.

They passed several small groceries which Nils had raided before and were moving into a new area when they found the tracks.

“Stop,” Nils said softly. “Look at this.”

Ella came forward to examine them. “Boot tracks.”

“Lots of them, all going north. Sleds too, I think, there.”

“Soldiers from Kastellet?”

“No, wrong direction. These —”

“Humans!” It was another voice, such as they had not heard in days. They both looked up to see a soldier stepping out from an alley. His rifle was ready, but not pointed at them.

“Yes,” Ella answered, lowering her own weapon. “We're volunteers from the clinic in Amalienborg. We're looking for food for us and our patients.”

The man came towards them, his expression strange, both wary and compassionate. “You have patients? You gave them the … cure?”

“Yes, yesterday. They haven't responded yet, but we need food for when they do.”

“I … see. I think you'd better come talk to our captain. He's up ahead with the others. We heard you back here and came back to see if we'd picked up a monster.” A second soldier had now come out, her weapon ready but again not aimed at them. Ella understood. Even though _they_ weren't monsters, a monster could come out at any moment. Her rifle and Nils's were also ready.

The three followed the soldiers for want of a better idea. It occurred to Ella quite suddenly that the two soldiers, like Ella herself, were not wearing masks, and further that they wore different unit patches. “Soldier,” she addressed the nearer of the two, “are you two immune to the disease?”

“We are. I'm Jensen, by the way. We, that is our whole group, we're all immune. The army was, was … badly hit. We had masks but it was already among us when we realized … anyway, there's a blood test for immunity so we were found to be immune and we … tried …” She was clearly having difficulty going on.

“I understand. I've done what I can too.”

“But those two, they're not?”

“Not so far as we know. We didn't have any blood test. I was bitten —”

 _”When?”_ That was the soldier who had first addressed them.

“More than three weeks ago, now. Believe me, if I weren't immune, we'd know by now.”

“We'll give you the blood test. We need all the immunes we can get.”

“Um, wait. We don't mean to go with you. We have patients to care for.”

The soldier looked back at her with an expression now wholly compassionate. “I'll let the captain explain.”

Wondering what the captain could have to explain about their situation, Ella looked over at Nils, who shrugged in confusion. They continued to follow the soldiers as they had no particular direction in mind anyway.

The soldiers led them into a group which had dispersed themselves around an intersection, guards posted on all the streets and a smaller group in the middle taking advantage of the break to cook something. There were perhaps thirty in the group, about evenly divided between men and women, most in army uniforms but some in navy uniforms and others in civilian clothes. They all had large backpacks and a dozen children's sleds, packed high with supplies, were lined up waiting to be dragged along.

After the three had been led to a medic for a blood draw, they were introduced to the captain, an older man, perhaps in his sixties, who introduced himself as Jens Larsen from Odense. “You're volunteers from a clinic? You have patients?”

“Eighteen of them right now. We need to find food and get back to them,” Ella answered firmly.

“You received the cure? You used it on them?”

“Yes, of course we used it! What did you expect?”

“We expected you to use it. Ms. Stine — yes, I know who you are — my brother was a member of the Rash Research Group in Odense. They came up with the cure and released it. My brother … killed himself after the release.”

_”What?”_

“They released it because it was all they had and all they could do. It cures the Rash. It also causes permanent and incurable brain death.”

“What?” Ella's voice was now quite faint.

“The chairman believed that that was all they could do. That the only hope was to prevent the afflicted from turning into monsters, for the sake of the immunes. Like us. My brother … couldn't accept that decision.”

“You mean we … you mean _I_ killed all our patients?”

“No. You only accelerated their deaths. As you would have done if they had started to change.”

Ella didn't answer. How could she, when she _had_ stabbed so many patients with poison? But to kill them believing she was curing them …

In the resulting silence, the medic waved a hand for attention. “She's immune as she said. The other two are not.”

“You can see we're a scratch group,” Larsen explained. “We're all immune. We're survivors. We're going to try to set up a, well, a colony of immunes. There are lots of uninhabited islands that we can settle on. We want you to come with us, Ms. Stine, but we can't bring non-immunes along. I'm sorry.”

“I won't leave my friends.” Ella's voice was flat.

Larsen sighed, nodded. “We won't force you, of course. I'm sorry I can't offer you our supplies because we need them.”

“My cat,” Ella said slowly, struck by a thought. “I have a cat. Her name is Molly. If she stays here she's likely to tangle with a monster. Will you take her with you? Will you keep her safe?”

“Of course. I had a cat but … We'll take good care of your Molly. Lead us to her.”

Nils led the way; he knew Copenhagen better than Ella did. Molly came out of her bucket to complain to Ella and then stopped, hissing and spitting. All of the others stopped as Ella hurried to her. “Molly, what's wrong? Is there danger? Is there …?” She followed Molly's fixed stare back to … Anna.

Ella's heart broke, thinking of Anna's tender care of the patients for all these weeks. “Anna, back away.” When Anna had retreated a few meters, Molly fell silent. Rising, Ella approached her friend. “Anna, dear heart, let me see your shoulder.”

Obedient as always, Anna removed her coat, pulled her sweater away from her throat. The Rash was still very faint, but it was there. Ella and Nils simply stared for a long moment while the soldiers, despite being immune, backed away.

Nils shook his head as if to dislodge a fly, stepped forward, helped Anna into her coat, and gently removed her mask, throwing it to the ground. After a moment, looking into her eyes, he removed his own mask and dropped it, turning her away from the others. No one else spoke as he put an arm around her and led her away, murmuring softly, “Copenhagen is beautiful in the snow, Anna. Come, let me show you some of my favorite sights.”

When the two were out of sight, Larsen turned to Ella. “Come with us, Ms.Stine. We're going to try to survive. You're immune; we need you. Come with us. Copenhagen is dead. Denmark is dead. Your friends … but you're not dead. Come with us.”

Ella picked up Anna's discarded mask and carried it in her left hand, Molly in her bucket tucked under the right arm, through the snowy empty streets of Copenhagen with the soldiers to the port. She didn't care what she did or where she went. Without the soldiers around her, she might have followed Anna and Nils into the frigid silence. She went with the soldiers because she lacked the will to do otherwise.

Standing at the rail of a tugboat, watching Copenhagen disappearing into the distance, she absently turned the mask in her hands and thought back over the past weeks: the newspaper report, the disastrous talk show, all the terrors that had followed.

Ella Stine turned the mask over once again, not really seeing it.

 _Cassandra,_ she thought distantly.

 _I really shouldn't have hit him. But then, he hit me first._ She found it impossible to care.

_I did what I could, but it didn't work. Nothing will work._

_It's the end of the world._


End file.
